In the manufacture of bedding, a mattress cover is often comprised of upper and lower panels that are often fabricated from layers of different soft goods. Such mattress cover panels are typically made on wide-width multi-needle quilting machines and associated panel cutters such as those described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,154,130, 5,544,599 and 6,237,517, all hereby expressly incorporated by reference herein. The upper and lower panels are separated by a border piece that forms the sides of a mattress and extends around the full perimeter of the panels. Multiple mattress border pieces are often cut from a single, wide piece of fabric on a border slitting machine having multiple slitting blades in parallel across a width of the slitting machine.
One or more manual operations are required with known border slitting machines. For example, prior to slitting border pieces, the slitting blades must be manually positioned at desired locations. The positioning operation requires that the slitting blades be unlocked, for example, by loosening a locking screw, manually moved to new positions across the width of the slitting machine and then, manually locked at the new positions. Further, the slitting blades may require manual sharpening. In addition, after the border pieces are slit, the border pieces may then be manually cut to a desired length. The above manual operations are labor intensive, relatively slow and time-consuming, which substantially increases costs associated with the manufacture of the border pieces.
Further, with known border slitting machines, the slitting blades are mounted on a common drive shaft that extends across the width of the slitting machine. Thus, replacement of a slitting blade requires the removal of all of the slitting blades that are closer to an end of the support shaft. Again, the required removal of multiple slitting blades to replace a single slitting blade is labor intensive, time-consuming and requires the slitting machine be out of production. Thus, replacing a slitting blade reduces the efficiency of the slitting operation and substantially adds to its cost.
Therefore, there is a need for an improved border slitting machine that is more automated and efficient.